Hitler Planned UFO Attack On London, Claims Newspaper

To the Daily Mail, for one of its regular slabs of reader-tweaking nonsense.

"Hitler's secret flying saucer: Did the Führer plan to attack London and New York in UFOs?"

- queries the newspaper today, citing prototypes for a "bell-shaped craft", images and schematics for which are apparently all over the internet (meaning it must be true). The Mail even employs one of its graphics whizzkids to draw an Iron Cross onto an illustration showing a group of soldiers pointing at the craft as it hovers above them.

Nothing really new here, of course. The 'Nazi UFO' story has a long, rich lineage (this Wikipedia page summarises most of the history). The fanciful notion of untapped Nazi supremacy in the later years of the war, which posits that they had super-weapons capable of reversing their impossible position and secret bases on the Arctic or even the Moon, refuses to die out.

So why has the Mail resurrected it at this juncture, and why has it tacked on the notion that it was prepped to "attack London and New York"? Could it be that the prospect of an apocalyptic headline that draws in the key demographic-tapping words "UFO", "Hitler" and "Nazi" was too tempting to resist?